Captain Jack Harkness, Singing? In Godspell???
November 20th, 2006
Last Wednesday night, as Porpoise and I were reading the bit from the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus really lets the Pharisees have it for their hypocrisy (Matthew 23), I suddenly burst into, “You snakes, you viper’s brood!”, et cetera, from Godspell’s “Alas for You.” Thus was launched a whole evening of playing 30-second clips from various Godspell recordings as I tried to decide which to purchase to replace my old, long-gone tape (which, incidentally, was pilfered by a church choir director several years back). Poor Porpoise.
The end result was that I ordered the . It didn’t sound quite as dated as the (which I’m still quite fond of), but the vocalists could actually sing, unlike the ones in the more recent American revival album.
It arrived today, in record fast time for Amazon free shipping. So, as I’m looking at the liner notes, I see the name John Barrowman, and I think “Now why does that sound familiar?” Once again, comes to the rescue, and I see that John Barrowman is none other than Captain Jack Harkness from “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood.” On the CD, he does the lead part for “We Beseech Thee” (you can hear him in the !). Wonders never cease.
In the past few days, as I’ve been introducing Porpoise to Godspell, I’ve been trying to explain why I love it so much. In some ways, it really is a product of the seventies (the original featured the disciples as flower-children), and, as such, you would think its appeal would be limited. But I also remember seeing a community production in Little Rock when I was 12 years old that probably forever changed how I view theater and how I view Christian art.
The Little Rock production didn’t really have a 70’s feel—it was very well adapted to the then-current era and place. That’s one of the things that can be great about Godspell: if done well, if becomes incarnate in the culture where it’s performed, as Jesus became incarnate in 1st-century Galilee. But what I remember most about the performance is the effectiveness and simplicity of the way that Jesus called the disciples. As each one came to him, he greeted them with a simple hand gesture—a different one for each person—which they then repeated back to him. He Named them. Without words.
In church, on the stage, and on the page, I’m a sucker for the symbolic. Literal sorts of representations of the crucifixion of Christ (i.e., The Passion of the Christ) really don’t affect me much, in spite of the fact that I think that it’s important that the crucifixion and resurrection literally happened. But, tonight, as I listened to “By My Side” from Godspell, a song that doesn’t explicitly refer to the events leading up to the crucifixion but nevertheless is all about them (“Where are you going? Can you take me with you?”), I started crying. Maybe it’s because this recording includes the spoken words in the middle of the song, which the original cast recording doesn’t: Matthew 26:14-16, the description of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. Because they weren’t in the other recording, I wasn’t expecting them here—they caught me off guard. (Also, “By My Side” has extra resonance for me because I always think of it in connection to Lucy and Susan walking with Aslan on his way to the Stone Table in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.)
Anyway, Incarnation and symbolism—hurrah. Of course, Godspell isn’t always done well. If the director and the performers don’t get the basic concept of “fools for Christ,” they shoot for “cutesy” instead. Blech. I saw one of those performances once. From what I’ve heard about the 1973 movie, it sounds like it kind of misses the boat as well. I watched the , and the disciples look high as kites. But I can’t imagine that the symbolic elements of Godspell would transfer well to film, anyway. I love movies, but there are some things that live theater just does much better.
During my recent Godspell fixation, I learned some fascinating trivia from : the show began as a Master’s thesis for a Carnegie Mellon grad student. Who would’ve thunk? is definitely worth checking out:
“Tebelak originally produced Godspell at age 22 as his masters thesis project, under the tutelage of , at in December . He had been studying Greek and Roman mythology, with the deadline for his thesis two weeks away, but became fascinated by the joy he found in the Gospels. He attended an service in 1970 at ’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, wearing his usual overalls and T-shirt. A policeman frisked him for drugs after the service. He wrote of this experience, ‘I left with the feeling that, rather than rolling the rock away from the Tomb, they were piling more on. I went home, took out my manuscript, and worked it to completion in a non-stop frenzy.’ Though he never completed his coursework at the university, Carnegie Mellon nevertheless awarded him a degree.”
Wow. Pretty impressive.
Entry Filed under: Movies, Uncategorized
5 Comments Add your own
1. K | November 21st, 2006 at 2:59 pm
“Godspell,” like “Les Mis” and one or two other musicals, has a soundtrack absolutely engrained in my memory. You only had to name the song title and it was playing in my head! =) But I love Godspell, I think, for many of the multilayered reasons you mention here…
My high school put it on my senior year, and did an impressive job. The calling of the disciples included the hand-shake thing you describe, but also distinctive articles of clothing/accessories. I’m a visual person, so these esp. grabbed my attention (in particular, a rainbow cap with the spinny thing on top). What struck me was that God’s calling was exactly this bestowing of individuality and uniqueness, not a cookie-cutter sameness of being a ‘good Christian.’
In the scene of their betrayal, each of the disciples gave up or cast aside the item that Christ had shared w/ them. Oh, maybe it was just one of them that had a hand-jive w/ Jesus. She started to interact and then turned away. It was this moment when I started crying.
Your pick of recordings sounds like it’s worth checking out!
Think my grad program will be kind enough to award me a degree if I ‘never complete my coursework’? Some days… But then, I haven’t written “Godspell” or its equivalent yet.
2. theotter | November 21st, 2006 at 9:09 pm
K: “What struck me was that God’s calling was exactly this bestowing of individuality and uniqueness, not a cookie-cutter sameness of being a ‘good Christian.’”
I don’t know–I think every good Christian needs a propellor cap!
Kidding, kidding . . . Thanks for sharing your experiences!
3. Mink | November 22nd, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Here’s another instance where the Gospels just don’t move me much. The melodrama of the OT and Revelation are so much more shaping to my inner landscape. Godspell always felt small and kind of thin to me.
Doncha love it: different art for different folk!
4. Pop Otter | November 24th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
At one level, Godspell is, of course, small and thin, as Mink has found it to be. It is not in-depth Bible scholarship or theology, nor is it great drama or literature.
Still, I must have seen at least a dozen stage performances plus the movie, so something must get to me. I keep going back. I don’t think that I ever saw a single performance that I thought captured the full potential, but some stand out nonetheless.
There is one line in the play that is almost invariably contextualized. In the telling of the parable of the sheep and the goats, the goats say, “If we’d known you were Jesus, we would have ___________. The blank is filled in by a local treat. Two Little Rock versions filled in the blank with “taken you to Say’s (Say McIntosh’s restaurant) for a Bar-B-Q sandwich and sweet potato pie,” and “gotten you tickets to the Razorback game.”
The ability of the play to be contextualized in more significant ways than that toss-in line is part of its potential power.
Perhaps the most memorable contextualization was a youth version I saw in an economically challenged Little Rock neighborhood with a cast composed about half of European American kids of mostly elite social background and and about half of African American kids of more diverse backgrounds. Rather than the flower-child or clown costuming of other performances, they were in stark black and white, and, during the make-up scenes, each actor appeared in half black-face, half white-face. The youth were attempting a statement about racial reconciliation, and I felt that they pulled it off.
Another part of its potential is the way it combines slapstick/burlesque comedy and serious themes of sin, grace, repentance, and redemption. K’s tears are an appropriate reaction to some of the more poignant moments that emerge from that odd combo.
My deepest disappointment with some productions is that they failed to capture the potential of the curtain call to portray the resurrection. That moment was most powerfully portrayed by one extraordinarily gymnastic Jesus I once saw in a community theater production.
Many of the songs are simply new tunes for old hymns. Who would have thought that dusty Presbyterian hymns such as “O Bless the Lord” and “We Plow the Fields and Scatter (All Good Gifts)” could take on such life?
For me, Godspell has on several occasions brought the Good News to delightful life and has filled my memory bank with sights and sounds on which I draw often.
5. theotter | November 24th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
In the production I remember best (one Little Rock production Pop Otter didn’t see!), the resurrection was loud, clear, and joyful. After the crucifixion, the disciples were walking around in a circle carrying what looked like a shroud. As the strains of “Long Live God” gave way to “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord,” the shroud became a big white parachute (like those we used to play with in gym class), and Jesus ran out from under it. No question there ’bout what happened! I didn’t know it was ever ambiguous.
Ahem. I’ll have you know that those hymns are from the Episcopal hymnal (”The Hymnal,” as its cover proclaims), though they may also appear in the Presbyterian hymnal.
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